The smug style in American liberalism [2016 repost time]

This article is basically a "by liberals, for liberals" attempt to inspire some philosophical self-reflection. It kept coming to mind over these last few weeks, and especially last couple days, of stories stirring up so much rage, counter-rage, questionable arguments, emotional triggering, etc. I've always identified left but I'm definitely starting to feel confused by the actions of other leftys. I definitely don't identify with the right so overall I'm feeling tribeless as of late. Thought it worth reposting this.

For completeness, here is last round of discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12906783

When I taught chess, we encouraged young players not to play "hope chess." Which means, making a move based on what you hope the opponent will do, not based on what you actually think is the best (or even a good) move. Playing a game based on logic, not based on hope, is both part of having a good strategy for any game and part of growing up. You can't just hope life's obstacles away.

And yet, by their actions and their rhetoric, "American liberals" seem to be implying that hoping that Trump gets impeached is, in fact, a viable political program, despite "rationally" knowing that the odds are against it, and that their denial of the reality is more likely to lead to 8 years of President Trump than 0 years.

The smugness is just a symptom of a much deeper childishness in the Democratic party.

In assessing the current poisonous political environment with respect to all parties...

“It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was us, what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things.” -Terry Pratchett, "Jingo"

The smugness comes from the American left party moving right to try and capture some "center" that does not exist except in the professional and donor class.

The "left wing" party busting unions 60 years ago would be unthinkable. The left wing under FDR, not coincidentally the most popular US president in history, did not hatefully dismiss the poor working class as stupid, it gave them jobs and lifted them up. Rural areas voted Democrat. But we don't have the FDR Democratic party anymore, we have the (Bill) Clinton Democrats. Which is pro-deregulation, pro-incarceration, anti-union, pro-business, anti-worker, pro drug-war, pro-foreign war, pro-austerity (all policies which are bad for the poor, downtrodden, working class people) but they say the right things educated people believe about minorities and talk about how their policy is "evidence based" and boy if you cross them you'll sure face the full force of their weaponized smug.

Trump flanked Clinton from the left on trade. I'll let that sink in. He said he was going to fight for American workers and reject trade deals that helped big business. Clinton waffled about it (because she and the Democrats support it).

I love this article. The Democratic party has a whole lot of smug to offer; if you join them you can feel like you're in the cool kids club, the journalist's club, the wealthy professor's club, the doctor and lawyer and banker's club. You're on the "right" side of things. But beyond a sense of identitarian membership in the "expert, thinking, correct" class, it doesn't have much else to offer.

If you suggest a program to make public college and universities tuition free as it is done in many other countries, the "compromise" response from the democratic party is a means-tested boondoggle: first if you prove to a faceless government bureaucrat that you are poor and get all your paperwork together (which is humiliating and difficult) then tuition is waived. Which is completely out of touch with the attitudes of the poor; if you ever talk to a poor person, the difference between a handout they have to beg for by admitting their poverty and a universal program that everyone gets just for being an American (like roads, police, etc) is the difference between visceral humiliation they will refuse to face or hate using and something they can get behind.

Look at the new slogan: better skills, better jobs, better wages. Skills first of course, implying the under and unemployed are lacking skills. Implying skills retraining programs (and not job creation programs, like the new deal) actually work. Implying there are actually jobs for those workers once they get "skilled-up". Implying people who currently have good jobs and are wealthy are there primarily because they are skilled (there are plenty of pundits and opinion authors at famous newspapers and middle managers at large companies whose continued employment directly contradicts this theory). Implying a corporate tax cut is designed to help workers. On and on and on. The democratic party is smug towards workers because it considers itself above them. It isn't the party of the workers anymore, it's the party of the people who think workers are stupid.

Telling climate scientists that you know better is smug.

Labor has no pricing power. Everything else follows.

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